Welcome to WellyLove

She arrives at the station in Waterloo, ready for a brand new day, book in hand, and a smile on her face amongst a crowd of sour ones dreading the daily commute. She used to be one of them too. She hated squeezing onto the crowded train, sitting next to a stranger or, on a busy day, standing in the aisle trying to keep her balance. But now she looks on the bright side – commuting to work on the train means more reading time. That pile of books that grows with every birthday, Christmas and impulse spending actually gets read.

She alights from the train, her feet already slightly sore from her brand new heels she bought for her brand new job, but smiling at the clicking noise they make on the concrete.

Through the subway she goes with the slow-moving crowd and as she emerges onto the street, and the cool autumn air hits her square in the face in that unique way Wellington has of saying hello. But she loves autumn, it’s her favourite season, so she doesn’t mind. After a year of breathing clean country air, the fresh sea air with hints of fumes and cigarettes is, strangely enough, a breath of fresh air because you can take the girl out of the city, but you can’t take the city out of the girl.

The trip uptown past the beehive and onto Lambton Quay is one filled with temptation - although most shops are yet to open for the day, she stores window displays in her memory making a mental note to have a look at that dress or that hat after work.

The journey past the Old Bank Arcade is her favourite part, and she slows down to admire the big cream coloured building that just sits on the corner there, not really on a street, really sitting on about three streets and still looking much as it did 50 years ago. It seems to say “I’m not going anywhere, you streets can work around me thank you”.

Funnily enough, the Old Bank Arcade got it’s name because it used to be a bank. If you look closely, you will notice the little windows the bank tellers would serve you at are still there. Even the massive safe is still there. And the words “Bank of New Zealand”adorn the outside of the building.

Willis Street is the next leg of the journey, and part of her can hear the steady rumble and jingling bells of the trams that used to travel up and down this road now plagued with never ending road works and impatient buses.

Work is on Boulcott Street in a modern building that faces the hills. An old three storey house perched high on the hill with red-trimmed window frames and bay windows peeks out from between apartment buildings and office buildings, just glass an concrete.

Lunch breaks take her down Manners Street where still more trams would run once upon a time, to the eclectic centre of town, Cuba Street, where buskers and fortune tellers and magicians and unicyle riders make people smile and laugh for a few coins dropped onto a blanket or into a guitar case. It is easy to walk up Cuba Street and simply see shop after shop and the further up you walk, the more eclectic it gets with vintage threads, vinyl records. But if you want to see what Cuba Street once looked like, all you have to do is look up. Some may look derelict and some may be closed down and bordered up due to earthquake risk, but if you look past those minor details and look at the dates enscribed on the front of each building, it’s history at your fingertips.

Weekends occassionally take her out to the glistening harbour, and although it can be a trial on a windy day with a southerly blowing in to swiftly burn your face with ice, you can’t beat it on a good day. On a good day, when the sun is shining and the sky is blue, she walks the length of the wharf breathing in he salt air watching people on bikes and scooters and roller blades and anything else with wheels zoom past her while kayaks and yachts drift lazily in the rarely calm water.

The girl in this story is me. This is the beginning of an infinite project called WellyLove.

As I am writing a novel based in Wellington over the years from 1915 to 2012, and, as I will not be travelling far in the next year due to the need to save my ass off, most of my time will be spent in this great city where I will be researching it’s colourful history in order to shape New Zealand’s next bestselling novel (I'm modest, I know). Not only will I be researching, but I will also be embracing my city like I did the Wairarapa because there is so much to love, to experience, to learn, and just because we’re Wellingtonians does not mean we can’t be tourists in our own city. So I’m going to share what I learn and experience with you, dear readers. It could be anything from the history of a building or a fascinating gravestone; a famous person long dead; a review of a restaurant or cafe; an event; a tour; an interesting quote or photograph; or simply musings on what it is like to live in the Coolest Little Capital in the world.

Journalist vs. Human Being

After working as a journalist for 19 months, I went to my first ever press conference on Sunday. I know, shocking right? Well, that’s because nothing major ever happens in the Wairarapa.
But that all changed when a hot air balloon caught a power line which sent the basket up in flames and plummeting to the earth, killing all 11 on board on Saturday morning.
Before I go on, let it be known that I am not writing this to get for sympathy for my poor journalist soul. I am writing this to get my thoughts out of my head so I can sleep tonight, which is one of the purposes of my blog, and I’m sure some of you might like to know what it’s like to cover the worst aviation disaster in New Zealand since Erebus. Pressure much?!
While journalists from my work who were in the Wairarapa were woken up by our chief reporter minutes after it happened, I was guiltily having a sleep in at my parents house in Lower Hutt and didn’t know about it until three hours later when my partner woke me up with a text message telling me the news.
I raced upstairs to get online and find out the full story and the first thought that went through my head was that of a journalist: “We have a lead story for Monday’s paper”.
I was already rostered on to work on Sunday, and I imagined that my editor would come in and me and another reporter would work on the story together.
But as the day wore on and the radio reports started naming people and the television reports began calling it the worst aviation disaster since the Erebus crash in 1979, in which all 237 passengers and 20 crew on board were killed, I had an inkling that it would be slightly more major than I thought.
It was not until I drove back to the Wairarapa on Sunday morning that it started to sink in both professionally and personally.
It has taken a good year for it to happen, but I finally feel like Wairarapa is home, and even when I leave, it will still feel like home. So having something like this happen in my home, to people I’ve met, is not an easy thing to deal with.
It’s a bit of a moral dilemma being both a journalist and a human being, and this isn’t the first time I have felt like I have too much compassion, too much of a conscience for this job.
On the one hand, you feel your heart breaking for the families who have lost someone they love and for your community, but on the other hand, you have to try and feel happy about the fact that you are writing about an historic event that will remembered for years and years to come – people will have your newspaper tucked away in a memorabilia box; people will have your articles glued in a scrapbook. Events like this make a journalist’s career.
I went to the Carterton Events Centre today to interview a reverend who I adore and who I had tea and scones with just weeks ago, and seeing the One News crew loitering outside with their video cameras set up, looking bored and unaffected while I waltzed in and could count about six people I knew who were visibly upset, really brought it home to me and made me feel like I’m truly a Wairarapa resident.
I told the reverend that I couldn’t sleep on Saturday night knowing what was waiting for me at work on Sunday, and she said that even people who did not know anybody on the balloon were being deeply affected, but their grief had nowhere to go.
So she encouraged me to sign the condolence book, and when I did, I felt my heart lighten just slightly, but still fought back tears as I power-walked back to my car where I sat and just breathed.